My first Les Paul Standard in 20 Years!
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- čas přidán 12. 02. 2024
- I wanted to see for myself how Gibson is doing these days with their regular USA line. I decided what better way to find out than by buying a recent Les Paul Standard.
I discuss the fit and finish, fretwork and setup, and overall playability and sound. I demo the guitar clean in isolation, as well as with the amp cranked in a mix. I then give my final thoughts.
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One day I'd like to own a Les Paul with P-90 pickups, like the one Freddie King used!
Yes, for a personal Les Paul, that’d be my choice as well.
Thanks for watching.
Just got a les Paul special and it is an animal. P90s are something everyone needs to experience
What😱 I finally know who I are! Wow, that’s amazing!! Great review, fine fretboard work as usual!
Looks like it would be a keeper! Thx!
Thank you my friend. Funny thing is, I’m really not a Les Paul guy. But if I were going to buy one for personal use, it’d probably be the goldtop with the P90s.
Sounds great, Leonard!
It’s a classic. 😊
Hi Leonard greetings from the UK. I really enjoy your videos and find them really informative, keep up posting.
Thank you so much. I will continue as long as I can. I very much appreciate viewers like you.
I just recently ran across your channel, and I am very glad I did. You demo guitars for the blues and that is what I play.
Thank you so much. I’m very happy you found me. Stay tuned.
Bought one in 2020 and I love it, great review and playing as always, take care
✌️🧷🎸
Nice. Glad you found a keeper. Thanks and enjoy it.
I just stumbled across your channel,..Very well conducted, nice playing and fantastic tones.
Subscribed !
Thanks so much. Very happy you found the channel.
Cool channel and nice review, very professional. You play some sweet blues man. I have always been a les Paul guy but I love strats too. I have been lucky I guess to find some solid LPs that are under 9lbs, look great, and stay in tune (Mostly ha). Cheers 🎸👍🏼
Thank you so much. I appreciate it and enjoy your guitars.
That’s some nice playing. A got a 2020 standard and absolutely that thing. The only complaint I kinda had was the neck was firewood. Had to put a couple coats on there.
Thanks so much. Glad you’re enjoying yours. And if you’re referring to the rosewood, yeah, Gibson sends out some pretty dry ones. Thankfully the solution is simple enough.
Bought one last year and it's a nice guitar.
Well enjoy it my friend. Thanks for watching.
Great review, refreshing to see and hear a new Gibson Les Paul played clean, tastefully. I finally got a Gibson Les Paul Std in 2001, since then I've bought other fine alternatives from Epiphone and Tokai but ended up selling them and keeping the Gibson. Call it Mojo? Keep up the good work Leonard!
Thanks so much. So glad you enjoyed it.
My 2022 50's standard is a GREAT guitar, my first real LP and worth every penny, acoustically you can tell the wood is good. Burstbuckers are great as well. I had to do some fret work despite the PLEK procedure.
As I understand it, Gibson Pleks the guitar during production with the strings off, simulating string tension, which isn’t ideal.
From Sweetwater’s website: Yes, it’s true that all top-tier Gibsons arrive Plek’d from the factory. But we’re able to Plek your Gibson using your preferred strings for an added level of precision. In our experience, a Plek Pro treatment from the skilled eyes and experienced touch of our in-house luthiers can add the final level of polish to an already great Gibson.
The subtext isn’t hard to understand. Thanks for watching and enjoy your guitar.
Great looker, I can’t squeeze another guitar out of my budget, but if I could, I’d go for this one.
Well, it wouldn’t be in my budget either if I’d planned to keep it!
Thanks for watching.
What ever guit you play it always sounds great!
Les Pauls original is my favourit
Cheer's
Thanks so much my friend. Very happy you enjoy the channel.
I bought a 2017 LP Studio, but it doesn't have any binding... 😐
Yeah, but the important parts are all there and it costs less.
Thanks so much for tuning in.
That's true, I still love it. : )@@leonardgriffieblues5845
it is
Uh.. sure. (What is? LOL)
I’ve tried to force myself into possibly acquiring a Les Paul. Just can’t do it, Strats or Tele’s are all I prefer.
I feel the same way about Strats.
Actually I’m not really a Les Paul guy myself. I like them, but they’re never my first choice.
Thanks for watching.
I was always a Fender player, but a wise luthier recommended I get a Les Paul and just keep it around for when I wanted a change or a specific sound. Mine sat around for years, hardly touched, then for some reason I just bonded with it and now it’s number 1! If you can afford/justify the above, it’s well worth it and you’re unlikely to lose much on secondhand purchase/resale!
Yeah, Gibson's been off and on in quality for a few years. The worst example I remember I went to a local music store many years ago and picked up a Paul and the low E string was completely dead. It wasn't the string being old, or buzzing out, that part of the actual guitar was just dead, maybe incorrect formulation of the wolf note, although that should only affect one or two notes, not the entire string, I don't know. Should never have left the plant.
I def didn't buy it, but it bothered me that someone was going to consider this their dream guitar trusting the Gibson brand and wind up with a dud. If you're going to buy a les paul blind online, I've had good experience with Sweetwater. In addition to being plek'd, they have people that will set up the guitar reasonably close to how you like it, at least for certain guitars and high end les pauls are definitely one they do this with. Gibson has improved but maybe that's because chinese sub $500 guitars are coming with better set ups these days and it's just too embarrassing.
I think I mentioned in the video that of all the Gibsons I bought prior to starting this channel two years ago, only my late 70s Les Paul didn’t have to immediately go to my guy for a full fret level and setup (because someone had it done before I bought it). So in that respect, the recent models (I think everything’s been 2020 or newer) are clearly more consistent in build and playability. Although the truth is, if I were keeping them as personal guitars, most still would need a little more fine tuning. But yeah, you used to be able to depend on a Gibson off the rack (or out of the box) to have way too much relief in the neck and high action to disguise the fact that the fret leveling wasn’t great. Weirdly, this even applied to the one and only Custom Shop model I bought. Plus, in the early 2000s it was super common to find sloppy binding work, uneven finishing, screws driven in at odd angles, etc. Again, from what I’ve seen in the last two years, they’ve cleaned that stuff up for he most part. Of course they’re not perfect and to be honest, never really were in the sense that tooling marks and finish bleed could be found on models from the 60s. Honestly, we didn’t pay as much attention to that stuff back then.
You could be right. It might be similar to what happened to the US auto industry when Japan started exporting cars that lasted twice as long as their US made counterparts. I’d like to think it’s less that than simply taking their customer’s complaints seriously, but who knows?
Thanks so much for watching and engaging.
For me really Gibson is just playing off what was. Reissue after reissue and here we are 41yrs after the move still with more gimmicks from Gibson...More accurate etc. Fact is farther away you get from the start the less authentic it usually gets. Henry's mindset is still running Gibson. What have they really done iconic since going to Tenn? Slash guitar..that was a copy LOL. for how much Gibson tries to close down the competition I think they should quit with gimmicks and just go back to what they did in Kalamazoo which is really the ones everybody considers the Holy Grails. Keep it simple offer multiple options for a standard and a custom(color,fretboard, neck profile, pickups) offer time periods to place orders for certain specials and quit playing the Hardcore Gibson fans...$1.000 for pickups in a hardshell case?? LOL. Beautiful guitar but theres way more out there killing it with less qc issues. Kalamazoo is smoking Gibson and has. To each their own but Id never buy a non Kalamazoo Gibson. They shoud be setting the standard instead of trying to copy what they made 50plus years ago. wont touch the Murphy lab thing. They lost it for me with the Robot tuners and the Rep demonstrating it said what trash they were. He actually broke the demo one he had but he had a backup guitar. Love the finish on yours and love your channel.
First, thanks so much for watching and enjoying my channel. Very much appreciated.
Yes, for an old company, Gibson has struggled, under various leadership, to decide what it wants to be. They were once rightly thought of as great innovators, but modern innovation has never worked for them for a variety of reasons. I think they now realize their costumer base doesn’t want innovation, they want the guitars from the 50s. Other companies don’t have that baggage and are free to innovate and do it way better.
Yes, the LP I featured this week is nice looking, but it won’t be mine for long. It was bought to feature on the channel, not for a personal guitar. Alas, there are other brands I prefer for the “Gibson thing”, and if I did buy a personal Les Paul, it’d be a goldtop with P90s.
Again, thanks for engaging.
Try a Heritage 150 (Les Paul), better than any Gibson!!!
I’ll probably get around to reviewing one at some point. Stay tuned.